


A terrible kind of nostalgia

by mrworldwide352



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Klaus reflecting on the umbrella academy being terrible, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Suicide Attempt, and by that I mean there's nothing in canon explicitly stating it can't happen, semi-colons as a substitute for writing ability
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 03:19:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18402035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrworldwide352/pseuds/mrworldwide352
Summary: Klaus spends six unfortunately sober days in rehab, haunted by the morbidity and grief of his childhood that echoes into the present no matter how he tries to run from it.Death shadows all of the Hargreeves siblings, has walked beside them since infancy. Some he can't save, couldn't save, won't save, (hopefully) won't need to save.Ben makes sure he gets to save at least one.





	A terrible kind of nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

> Serious warnings for discussion of suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts, and just generally a lot of very heavy stuff about grief

Court-ordered rehab is, as usual, an utter fucking nightmare. Sobriety catches Klaus quickly, the shadow of withdrawal crawling over him after less than a day. The itching at the back of his throat, the pain in his head that spreads all over, every nerve ending twitching with the sudden lack of numbness. The ghosts appear around every corner, advancing from the periphery of his vision until he’s fully clean and they stand over him in sharp focus.

“Anything you’d like to share today, Klaus?”

“Me? Oh no, I’m super-duper.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the woman behind his group leader, eyes white and mouth dripping blood.

Ben sits on the side of his too lumpy bunk bed, pity on his face. He’s unfazed by the ghosts that surround them.

“Now, Klaus, I’d like to continue from where we got to last time you were here,” Doctor Harris talks in his usual patient manner in their private sessions, weary and yet still tempering the process of getting Klaus to examine his issues. “You were talking about how your father-”

“Manipulative bastard,” Klaus smiles beatifically.

The worst are the dreams. At night, there is nothing to focus on, no way to ignore the dead. They call out to him, try to show him how they died. Even when he closes his eyes, he can still see them. Their horrors and their tragedies that he cannot opt out of.

 Most of the time, they’re strangers to him. Some of the time, they’re not.

 

It starts with Ben. Of course it does.

Klaus knows this scene well enough by now; he sees it every night. There’s no way to drown out that which is a memory. He’s standing at the top of the steps, swaying precariously but unable to move. It’s empty in his gut, only an echo of the few moments gone before. “Klaus,” Luther tries to get his attention, his voice numb, struck dumb. “Klaus, help me.”

He already knows. Luther will realise in a matter of seconds, what Klaus felt immediately. He has no choice but to feel it. Luther chokes a little, his shoulders shaking as he crouches. He has no idea where to put his hands; they jump from place to place awkwardly, wanting to do something, as Luther always does. It’s so silent, self-contained, the world beyond this room right now fallen away. There’s just Luther, crying quietly, and the echo of a scream just moments before. The scream, and how neither of them had been able to do _anything._ It had all been over so quickly-

“Luther!” Allison. Somewhere nearby, not in the room. Her voice pulls them down from the orbit of their grief, Klaus sees again: the step in front of him, the waning drip from the broken drainpipe. Luther is still hunched over. Seconds, it could’ve been. Hours, it could’ve been. “Luther!” Allison calls, “where are you? I’m pretty sure we’re all done here. I’m ready to go.”

Her words wash over Klaus with all the impact of a shadow. Luther snaps up as if pulled by a puppet string. “She can’t see this,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. “Klaus, we have to go.”

Klaus thinks it’s likely he’d never have moved from the spot he’d been in if Luther hadn’t grabbed him by the shoulders, rough in his grief, manhandling him towards the door. Luther always thought it was up to him to decide for the good of the team. And perhaps he once knew how to do that, before he idles in isolation for years and forgets what it is to exist among others.

But they don’t know this yet.

They exit out into the foyer, where Allison is waiting impatiently.

“What on earth have you two been doing? Diego’s just cleaning a few last things up so we can-” Allison falls short, sees the blood on Luther’s hands, the emptiness in Klaus’ eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Allison…” Luther reaches for her, but Allison is perceptive, more so than most, and she backs away.

“What’s wrong?” She demands, her eyes flicking around the room to try and find the source of the problem. “Where’s Ben?”

Luther chokes a little again. “He’s… he’s…” Stuck for words, he averts his gaze, rests for just a moment on the door behind them. “He got hit, it was all so fast… we couldn’t do anything…”

“Let me see him.” Allison tries to get around Luther, tears gathering in her eyes now, slamming her hands uselessly against his chest. Luther stops her, a barrier between her and her brother’s dead body.

“You can’t go in there.” His voice breaks, but he stands strong.

“Let me see him!”

“No.”

There’s no way any of them can get past Luther with force, but Allison has her own ways to get everything she wants.

“I heard a rumour you let me go see Ben,” she snaps, before he has any chance to stop her.

He has no choice but to move aside and let Allison go through the door behind him. But he follows on her heels, and then they’re both gone. Klaus hears Allison cry out Ben’s name.

He collapses where he stands, puts his hands over his ears. He doesn’t have the space for anyone else’s grief; it’s already so tight around his chest he’s suffocating, drowning in the memory of Ben’s face as it happened, Ben’s body lying motionless on the tiles. It’s a memory that will stay with him for the rest of his life, chipping away at any self-restraint he had, any ability to deal with the ghosts that whisper at his back.

He stares at their three discarded domino masks on the floor, and wishes sharply that they would burn into nothingness.

Sometime later (or perhaps after barely anytime at all), Allison and Luther emerge, holding each other tight, both sobbing. There’s blood on Allison’s hands now too, Klaus notices, and Luther is holding Ben’s mask. None of them speak to each other; they can’t. They’re sixteen years old, they’ve already lost one brother and seen things no teenager should ever see. They’re sixteen years old, and they have no idea how to deal with this.

Of course they don’t.

Diego storms in before they have the chance to do anything else, wiping a knife on his sleeve with a scowl. “What are you all sitting in here for? Everything’s been done for ages, Dad said he’d pick us up from the roof.”

Luther stands up, because he thinks he’s the oldest, and Klaus and Allison are in no hurry to beat him to it. Diego’s noticed the blood, the tears, the three discarded masks on the floor and the one in Luther’s hand. He goes through exactly the same thought process Allison went through, the recoil as Luther moves towards him.

“Where’s Ben?”

“I’m so sorry,” Luther begins, his voice still shaking. Klaus has no idea how he has the strength to keep doing this. “He got hit-”

“Ben!” Diego yells, because he never listens to Luther, starting forward. “Where is he?”

“You can’t see him.”

“Bullshit,” Diego snaps, alighting on the door behind them that they’ve made no effort to move away from. He starts to run, but Luther grabs him.

“Diego-”

“Get off me! Ben! Ben!” He’s screaming, more desperately with each time, kicking and punching Luther wildly. Luther doesn’t move, tears streaming from his eyes again. Klaus can’t comprehend what he did that day. Even through his own grief, he had the strength to try and prevent Allison and Diego from being haunted with the memory of Ben’s body for the rest of their lives (Ben later informs him that both Diego and Vanya had gone to see his body anyway, as if it might give them the closure they were so desperately searching for).

“Diego-”

“Let me go!” Diego keeps screaming, fighting. He won’t listen to Luther, and Klaus can’t blame him. Luther’s lifted him clean off the floor now, and yet he’s still hitting out at anything he can. “You bastard, let me go! Ben! Ben!” He’s screaming himself hoarse calling out for Ben, as if he might answer if he calls him enough times.

“Diego!” Luther shouts, shaking him hard enough to pause him for a second. “He’s dead! Stop it, he’s dead. He’s dead.” He keeps saying it, over and over, like he’s trying to convince them all.

Diego ceases fighting as Luther repeats it. _He’s dead. He’s dead._ His lip trembles, he tries to speak but he can’t get the words out. For the first and last time in his life, Klaus sees Diego burst into tears. And for the first and last time in Diego’s life to Klaus’ knowledge, he lets Luther comfort him, his face buried in Luther’s shoulder that is shaking as much as his.

Klaus feels like he’s watching it from behind a glass wall.

_He’s dead. He’s dead._

It doesn’t get much better after that.

How do you cope with death when you’re 16 years old and have been killing since you were a child? How do you understand death when you were raised to regard it as part of your education?

Vanya’s devastated. First Five, and now Ben: the only two of them who had ever really had any time for her.

Mom and Pogo are trying to comfort them, but they both lost him too.

Diego is screaming at Dad about it being his fault (it is), while Luther half-heartedly tries to stop him. He stops when Allison joins Diego, a dangerous glint in her eye. Reginald Hargreeves is unmoved. He has Mom cart them off to their rooms to calm down like they’re insolent children.

“This screaming and crying won’t help anyone,” he says. “They may go grieve in private whilst I tend to Number Six.”

“Number Six? Number Six? You bastard! His name is Ben! His name- His name-” Diego screams in frustration and lurches towards Dad. Luther grabs him, manhandles him up the stairs. Allison is glaring daggers, guided away only by Mom’s firm hand on her shoulder.

His name _was_ Ben.

Klaus sees all this as if he is floating somewhere faraway. He wishes he could cry, could feel _something,_ but all there is is emptiness. An empty space and Ben, screaming. Ben, lying motionless on the tiles.

He’d be seventeen in a week’s time. Not that that made a difference. Klaus had thought about buying him a book he’d been talking about. He probably never would have, would have come down on their shared birthday and given Ben a ‘loving birthday high-five’. He could still buy that book, like a piece of Ben. All he’d wanted was a book.

God, why can’t he _cry?_

They have the funeral on their birthday, like some kind of sick celebration with that stupid fucking statue. It’s grey and silent; they’re all cried out, everyone sitting stony, emotionless as the statue itself.

Vanya hasn’t touched her violin in a week, taking instead to searching for comfort in a house where there is none. Allison has locked herself in her room and refused to come out, to talk to anybody. Luther spends twenty hours a day hitting things in the training room in silence. Diego destroys his room, everything he owns, and then yells at Mom when she puts it back, good as new. Klaus takes a pill every morning just to wander through the day without caving in.

For the Hargreeves, grief is something that they do alone.

Klaus is sitting in his room that night when he hears it.

“Klaus, can you see me?”

He takes the bottle of pills he’s been hiding under his bed, and swallows all of them. He squeezes his eyes shut and puts his hands over his ears and begs that if he doesn’t see him, it isn’t true.

He wakes up in the medical room with the ghost of the pressure of defibrillator pads still on his chest. Mom is looking over him with such sadness, if she could cry (can she?) she would be. And Ben is standing in the corner, his gaze piercing in its anger. This will only be the first of many times.

Luther and Allison have no idea what to say, so they don’t say anything at all. Vanya tries to talk to him, but he doesn’t want it. All he wants is to do it again. Because that feeling, that _feeling,_ just before his heart stopped, was the only time he’s felt free. No voices, no ghosts, no dead brothers. Just the exhilaration that he would never hear any of those again.

“You selfish bastard!” Diego yells at him, as if from the other side of a wall.

It’s the last thing Diego ever said to him, because they wake up a week later and he’s gone. No explanation, he hasn’t even taken any of his possessions. But they all know it’s for good. Klaus catches Grace alone the day after, standing in the doorway of Diego's room with an unreadable expression on her face. He wonders if he told her.

“No matter,” Dad says, when Luther tells him. “Insolent boy. No great loss.”

Klaus wonders what he said about him.

And that’s it really. Vanya’s next; there hasn't been anything here for her for years. And Klaus realises he can go too, plan or not.

He marches out the door with the few normal clothes he's collected over the years, an antique vase he found in the lounge, and every intention of waking up that night in an ambulance.

Oh, and his dead brother.

 

He flinches awake in his cramped dorm bed. The room is lit only by the streetlamp light that’s managed to break through the gaps in the curtain and sprawl across the floor. Ben is sat on the tiny desk in the corner, reading _Journey by Moonlight._ He looks up at Klaus, a question in his expression. Klaus shakes his head.

Every time Klaus watches Ben die in his dreams, he comes away with something new that haunts him by day. The guilt that was behind Luther’s clumsy attempts to take charge, the fury that was behind Allison’s quest for fame, the desperation that was behind Diego’s anger. Vanya’s book had told him about how her grief was ignored, disregarded because she hadn’t been there. Klaus could see that now. He could see Dad’s cold, dead gaze that had never cared about them in the slightest, whatever they may have deluded themselves as children.

He can’t quite see himself. Not yet.

“What’s wrong?” Ben hisses.

At least, for him, he didn’t have to say goodbye to Ben.

“Nothing. Keep reading.”

 

* * *

 

He feels rattled the entirety of the next day. A sharpness to the dream he had last night that isn’t usually present has unsettled him. He’s more on edge than normal, shaken by it feeling less like a traumatic memory and more like he had been reliving Ben’s death all over again.

He can’t even take his usual thin enjoyment out of being encouraged to chat whatever rubbish he wants in group therapy.

“Are you okay?” Ben pesters him for the fourth time today, after he reacts particularly strangely when asked if he’d like cheese on his pasta.

He drags himself out of whatever horrifying part of last night’s memory he’s stuck in. “Tippity-top,” he grins. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I gave up some of my pubes to obtain a wonderful Persian rug from a voodoo lady?”

Ben groans and turns back to whatever he’s reading today. God he must have a lot of time to read. The only other thing he has to do is watch Klaus make bad decisions. Klaus briefly wonders about the mechanics of ghost books before becoming distracted by some horrifying ghost in the corner of the room. Figures.

The day ticks on slowly, as it tends to do when hung over by new sobriety and the horrifying memory of your brother’s premature death. Klaus counts the number of shoelaces in the room, and then again, because he can’t think of anything else to count. He listens to senile Judy talk solemnly about how she started doing heroin, and it’s awfully melancholy, but Klaus is staring at Ben, wondering if he’s angry that all he can do is read and watch his brother overdose every other week.

He never really thinks about these things when he’s high.

So, it’s a terrible day. And then he falls asleep only to find himself back in his childhood home, presumably ready and waiting to show him some other memory of awful, terrible times.

It looks exactly the same. Deceivingly warm perhaps to an outsider, yet Klaus could recount something awful that had occurred in pretty much every single one of these rooms. Quiet, but it had always been quiet, even when seven children had lived here.

He hears a commotion from upstairs, and decides to go see what it is, because if he’s here to see something he may as well see it, rather than lingering over a terrible childhood in the foyer like this.

Suddenly, there’s sirens wailing, and he quickens his pace upstairs, following the source of noise to the medical room. He sees Pogo and Mom, both of them frantically running around with syringes and defibrillators. He sees Dad, standing cold and unmoved as he always has, drawing an almost immediate desire to run in the other direction from him. He sees a stretcher, and is struck with the cold realisation of what he’s here to see.

“Luther?”

No one responds, because he’s not really here. He knew that instinctually, and yet the dream feels so real, so vivid and harsh; he couldn’t help but call out.

Luther, in adulthood, looks almost exactly as Klaus would have expected him to. Big, tall, blonde, still wearing the Umbrella Academy mission suit like a symbol of the loyalty he alone had held to Dad. Klaus can almost hear him chastising them in that superior way he always used to. _Klaus, stop messing about, we’re here on a mission. Hurry up Ben, there’s at least eight guys in there. Diego, try not to stutter when you talk to the reporters. Vanya, this is important mission stuff, we’ll talk to you later._

_You do realise Luther,_ Five would cut in, _that your Mother being the first to decide she didn’t want her weird-ass spontaneous baby does not in anyway make you superior to us?_

God, he’d been annoying. But some of the time, he’d been a good leader. Maybe even a good brother, at least once or twice, earlier on ( _sure,_ Diego would have said, _perhaps too good of a brother to Allison_ ).

Luther is laid out on the stretcher, unconscious. His chest is covered in blood, his skin there mostly gone, his breathing so shallow and weak. Reginald is shouting orders, Grace and Pogo are fussing around him, trying to do something to his chest, to stop the bleeding or whatever. And Klaus knows, as he always knows, that nothing they’re doing is working, that Luther is slowly slipping away.

He’s here to watch another of his siblings die.

He snorts, because of course this is part of his stupid goddamn power. It had never done him any favours before, so why start now? It’s all incredibly funny really, he thinks, making a noise that would be best described as a strangled sob.

“Luther,” he moves to his brother’s bedside, because he can’t hear him, but maybe he can since he’s nearly dead and all, and who knows the rules in that situation? “I don’t know if you can hear me. Maybe you can, since you’re, you know, dying and stuff and I’m here, and that’s my thing, I suppose, but you probably can’t. But either way, hang on a little longer would you, big guy? There’s still people to… I don’t know, throw through windows or whatever it is that you do with all that super strength.”

He pauses for a second, realising he has no idea what to say to a brother he’s not seen in a decade. “Allison would miss you. I would too. We all would; who’s gonna boss us around? Even Diego would miss you! Wouldn’t let him do a speech at the funeral, but he’d miss you. Luther… I know it’s been a while, well more than while-”

Then Mom’s trying to resuscitate him, but the defibrillator pads don’t even make Luther twitch. He’s too far gone; Klaus can almost see that his heart has stopped beating. Klaus screams, tries wildly to grab the defibrillator pads himself as if he might be able to have some effect, watching his hands pass straight through them.

“Bring me the serum,” he hears Dad say distantly, which he thinks is odd.

But the scene starts to dissolve and blur behind his tears, voices warping, moving further away, the sound of the heart monitor screaming echoing. “Wait! No, no, no, no, no! I’m not done, he’s still alive! Luther!” But the room in front of him is fading fast out of reality, because he’s waking up, the feeling of withdrawal symptoms that had been gone snapping back into place, Luther and Grace and Pogo and Dad all retreating from him.

Before everything vanishes, he catches sight of something strange. A calendar on the wall. _That can’t be right_ , he thinks, and then he’s gone.

 

He wakes abruptly in his tiny lumpy bunk bed in the rehab centre, just like last night, but with a wild drumming in his ears. “What’s wrong?” Ben asks.

“Luther,” he says. “We need to call the academy.” And with that, he jumps off the side of the bunk bed, running for the door in a state of fevered panic.

“Klaus, wait, what are you talking about? What’s wrong with Luther?”

Klaus recounts his dream as coherently as he can.

“So you’re saying… Luther’s dead?” Ben asks quietly, meekly, as if he’s hoping Klaus will shoot him down.

“I don’t know! Jesus, I don’t know! There was a calendar on the wall in the room, and I think it said December 2012, so Luther could’ve been dead for five years and we didn’t even know shit about it! Like ‘oh no one bother to call Klaus, he’s not gonna want to know that his brother died violently on a mission after we left him all alone-” He breaks off, swallows a sob.

“We have to call the academy.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s one in the admin office, I’ve seen it.”

They rush over, trying to be as quiet as possible, since technically Klaus isn’t supposed to leave his room at night.

“It’s locked,” he hisses.

“One of the counsellors will have the keys.”

“Yeah, no shit, that’s not helpful!” He can hear the hysteria in his voice, climbing in desperation by the moment.

_He’s crashing._

“You could… break it down.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I mean it! Dad taught all of us how to break down doors, including you. This situation calls for it!”

“I haven’t kicked a door down since I was fourteen!”

“Just try!”

“Fuck, okay!” Klaus slams a foot into the door before he can lose his resolve, throwing all his weight and desperation behind it. And shockingly, it works. Accompanied by a large crash that means he’s definitely going to be caught, but that’s irrelevant to the current issue.

He’s already dialling as he snatches up the phone; he couldn’t forget the academy number if he tried (and he has tried). All he can think about is Luther lying on that stretcher with half a chest, the sound of his heart no longer beating. He might only have one brother left. He’d had _four_ , and then Five had gone, and Ben had died, and Luther could be gone too.

They’d never even been close.

_How could they not have told him?_

Pogo answers on the fourth ring. The sound of a voice he hasn’t heard in a decade would have sent Klaus spinning if he hadn’t been in such a state already.

“This is the residence of Doctor Reginald Hargreeves, might I enquire as to who-”

“Pogo, it’s Klaus. Can you put Luther on the phone?”

“Master Klaus, are you… well?”

“Just put Luther on the phone, Pogo.”

He hesitates. Only for a second, but it’s unmissable. “Master Luther isn’t available currently.”

Klaus’ blood goes cold. “Why isn’t he available?”

“Master Klaus, are you sure-”

“Why isn’t he available?”

Pogo sighs. “Master Luther is on an extended mission collecting data on the moon.”

“He… what?”

Ben hisses, gesturing frantically down the hall. Klaus can hear the commotion of doors closing down the corridor; he’s about to be caught and likely will not get an opportunity to reach a phone for some time.

“Your father asked him to monitor-”

“December 2012.” Klaus cut in. “I dreamed that he was dying.”

Pogo hesitates again. “Master Luther did indeed suffer rather a grave injury in that month. But we were able to revive him. Might I enquire as to how you know about that Master Klaus?”

Doctor Harris is advancing down the hall, looking rudely awoken and very confused as to what Klaus could possibly be doing on the phone at this hour.

“How do you know he’s okay on the… moon or whatever?”

“He checks in regularly and sends correspondence. In fact, he checked in only a few minutes ago. I promise you, Master Klaus, your brother is fine.”

Klaus sags against the wall, the fear he’d been holding in his gut finally begins to dissipate, and he bursts into tears from the relief. Luther is _alive._ He didn’t miss it, he still has two brothers left, just like he had yesterday. He gives Ben a weary thumbs up, and sees the same utter relief echoed on his brother’s face.

Doctor Harris finally reaches the office, tries to take the phone from him, but Klaus dodges.

“Well, tell Luther to keep… eating his carrots or whatever. _Great_ to talk to you, Pogo, anyway, byeeeeeee.” He’s half laughing, half sobbing with the gratitude for the affirmation that he is not cursed to see all of his siblings die (maybe).

“Wait, Master Klaus-”

Klaus has already slammed the phone down.

Doctor Harris just looks completely bewildered.

“Klaus, what on _earth_ are you doing on the phone at this hour?”

“I was having a conversation with a talking monkey,” Klaus says, affronted. “Don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> yes, I'm too much of a coward to make a guess at how Ben died, don't @ me


End file.
